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Page 1 of 31907 · PDF PAGE 142
THE MOTHER 135 Your virginal sweet spirit cannot reach My fury .... Thus in the intoxication of his desire he raves , in her silence he sees her affection , and in the terror of her eyes her love . Cora is horror -stricken : “ you beast !” “ you fool !” “ I am defiled .” He stands dazed and wondering . Then in the following pages she tells him : “ I am the mother of thy bastard birth ” ; he prays , he threatens , and shrieking hurls insult on insult at her : Me , the sole pledge of your debaucheries , You keep - your love, the mere maternity Yo…
1907 · PDF PAGE 148
THE MOTHER 141 Force , ” we find that of Motherhood . The true wife must sacrifice her children before the shrine of her lover , and the true mother must sacrifice her lover on the altar of her children . This is no paradox , no riddle , no twisting of words ; for Crowley offers us in the glittering chalice of Eternity the sacred blood of the Bull , the Second Christ ; and as the first, the Lamb of God, sprang from the immaculate womb of the Virgin -Mother , so shall this second incarnation spring blood -red from the snowy lips of the great Sup…
1907 · PDF PAGE 141
…horedom , tears off his mask and shrieks : I am the hideous poison of thy veins And foulest fruit of thy incestuous womb .? 2 “ I am thy mother,” is her answer ; so , even in her frenzied madness , the greatest force in nature asserts itself. He stabs her , and stabs himself ! such also is filial love . In “ The Mother's Tragedy ” the characters are practically reversed . Ulric , who ravishes Cora , his mother , even sinks deeper in the mire of lust than Ratoum . It is a curious case of love baulked turning to the foulest lust . He is passionat…
1907 · PDF PAGE 59
…wisdom , greater than the power of the Gods themselves ; for they too must worship at the shrine of Love , the shrine of the great World Mother , the mystic Isis , goddess of beauty , mother of love , queen of laughter , mistress of pleasure . “ I am all that has been , that shall be, and none among mortals has hitherto taken off my veil.” Innocent friendship or platonic love can never be a success where the rapture of a kiss is burning on the lips of two lovers ; the first spells ignorance and the second failure, for love will out , and if not…
1907 · PDF PAGE 7
CONTENTS PAGE 3 PREFACE FOREWORD CHAP . I. THE LOOKING -GLASS II . THE VIRGIN . III . THE HARLOT IV . THE MOTHER V. THE OLD BOTTLE VI . THE CUP . VII . THE NEW WINE 9 15 49 109 123 145 167 . . . . 191
1907 · PDF PAGE 146
THE MOTHER 139 We have passed through many fields , many groves , many wildernesses ; we have crossed the pure snowy mountains of Chastity , and the boiling seas of Passion , losing ourselves in not a few of those intricate and unknown by-paths which lead to trackless wastes and gloomy abysms . Aleister Crowley has pointed us the way , twined round the Tree of Knowledge he has offered us fruit, and we have eaten of it with face smiling or awry ; we have become as gods knowing good and evil , and having become gods with much striving against adv…
1907 · PDF PAGE 147
140 THE STAR IN THE WEST Locusta , and yet is vestal and virgin ; white as the driven snow , pure as a mountain rill . One with the pale Mother of Bethlehem and the scarlet harlot of the City of Abominations . Then will the storm -clouds part , and the smoke and steam of the earth vanish , and the social harlot , whose painted buttocks have heaved and hog -wallowed through the centuries , shall be seized and hurled from the rock of Tarpeia , and smothered with the goatish kisses of her lechery midst the charnel glitter of her gold . And the Ves…
1907 · PDF PAGE 337
THE MOTHER'S TRAGEDY . Boards , medium 8vo , pp . xii + 111 , 55 . THE SOUL OF OSIRIS . Boards , medium 8vo , pp . ix + 129 , 55. [ These two vols . together make “ The Temple of the Holy Ghost , ” by omitting the two plays in “ The Mother's Tragedy ."] CARMEN SAECULARE . Green wrapper , Demy 4to , pp . 30 , 25. 6d . TANNHÄUSER . Cloth , Demy 4to , 155. [ A few copies of the first edition , boards , 215 . NEW YEAR'S CARD , 1903. [ Out of print .] BERASHITH . 4to , pp . 24. China paper , 55 . SUMMA SPES . ( Out of print .] BALZAC . ( Out of prin…
1907 · PDF PAGE 173
…r , chill, My health - where flies my vivid will ? My carcass with quinine is crammed ; I wish South India were damned ; I wish I had my mother's nursing , Find precious little use in cursing , And slide to leaning on another , God , or the doctor , or my mother . But , dare you quote my fevered word For better than my health averred ? The brainish fancies of a man Hovering on delirium's brink : Shall these be classed his utmost span ? All that he can or ought to think ? No ! the strong man and self -reliant Is the true spiritual giant . I blam…
1907 · PDF PAGE 80
… life ; I sought another world . I “ got religion " -how I hate the phrase ! So jest the matron newspapers . ... For I will do without a mother's name If only I may keep a son's love still ! ' It is not here that we can enter on the fearful tragedy of these short dozen pages , suffice it to say , that it was that of Phædra and Hippolytus , the sexes however being reversed . Shamed , insulted by her son , she still dares kiss him : Why I dare Now take your head between my hands and kiss Your forehead with these shameful lips of mine, These harlo…
1907 · PDF PAGE 286
…y , like Hume and Huxley , solely identifies it as a law based upon inference . This sequence of events is vividly demonstrated in “ The Mother's Tragedy . Cora thinks , “ God hath made smooth the road beneath the hearse of my forgetful age ." Not so however : They know not , learn not , cannot calculate How subtly Fate Weaves its fine mesh , perceiving how to wait ; Or how accumulate The trifles that shall make it master yet Of the strong soul that bade itself forget .' This law of Cause and Effect logically leads us to the third great princip…
1907 · PDF PAGE 79
…ers of reason . And much of this new morality do we find in the love-gospel of Aleister Crowley . First turning to the love incarnate in motherhood , we find a touching case in the picture of Cora in “ The Mother's Tragedy." Cora Vavasour , late of the halls , yet as true and noble a woman as ever lived , a type of woman that , thank Heaven , is not so uncommon among those whom the prudes call fallen classes . Cora was scarcely , however , one of these ; living in luxury she tried to bury the recurring past , “ Old hours of horror ,” and she tr…
1907 · PDF PAGE 172
…dy vultures on the mental dead , as they take their place on the eternal towers of silence — true mutilators of corpses . Ulric in “ The Mother's Tragedy ," tells Cora that “ Excess is danger , equally in prayer as in debauchery .” 2 And this the howling mob of religionists can never grasp . We know of the spots in the Agapae , and we know to what they referred : Out ! out ! the ghastly torches of the feast ! Let darkness hide us and the night discover The shameless mysteries of God grown beast , The nameless blasphemy , the slimèd East Sin inc…
1907 · PDF PAGE 42
THE LOOKING-GLASS 35 Euripides . Crowley does the same, as we see in “ The Tale of Archais , ” also in “ The Mother's Trag edy ” and “ The Fatal Force ” ; but in these two latter dramas with this important difference , that instead of applying Greek style to Greek scenery , he applies it to a totally different end , namely to the expres sion of modern surroundings , or to his own in trinsic ideas , as in the last -named play , which , even more so than in “ The Mother's Tragedy " is , as we shall see later on , a subtle discount on present -day…
1907 · PDF PAGE 36
…l have many points in common . It is more than probable that Aleister Crowley had already read most of Shakespeare before he wrote “ The Mother's Tra gedy ,” and yet , because of this we should not neces sarily say that the following magnificent lines were due to the influence of the great master , notwith standing the fact that they are in many respects equal to much of his best : Your breath , that burns upon me , wraps me round With whirling passion , pierces through my veins With its unhallowed fire , constrains , compels , Drags out the co…
1907 · PDF PAGE 143
…ronic lust has reft asunder the last thread of his sanity ; in his hand he carries a razor , first he slays Madeline , and then , at his mother's bidding , himself : A blood-gr vapour and a scorpion steam To poison the unrighteous life of God ! 2 Thus does this fearful tragedy end . Gruesome with lust and cruelty , Ulric , a horrible perversion , overcome by the violence of his desires , a second Amnon , a second de Sade . His ideal once at least partially pure , broke , as the truth burst on his ear , into a wild and fearful nightmare ; and in…
1907 · PDF PAGE 93
… Shelley , and Browning . Neither was their love a mere selfish gratification of the senses . Anxiously they waited to see “ whether the mother stood behind the bride ," falteringly he would not part with her till she held the key of the hereafter " ; and ultimately they resigned all for the sake of others : Even while I begged her ,I well knew she must . We could not , loving to see children laugh , Let cowards twit them with their mother's lust . Even our own purity confirmed the trust . 1 Alice , an Adultery , vol . ii, p . 84 .
1907 · PDF PAGE 77
…dered to be purer and more ideal , but this idea has only grown out of man's entire ignorance regarding the physical relationships . The mother is in no way purer than the wife , neither is the virgin purer than the mother . The truest definition of chas tity is that as given by Benjamin Franklin , which de fines chastity as “ the regulated and strictly temperate satisfaction without injury to others , of those desires which are natural to all healthy adult beings .” The reason for this idea of uncleanliness though certainly obscure is traceabl…
1907 · PDF PAGE 13
…lood . And they are : Aceldama . The Tale of Archais . Songs of the Spirit . Jezebel . An Appeal to the American People . Jephthah . The Mother's Tragedy . The Soul of Osiris . Carmen Saeculare . Tannhäuser . Berashith . Ahab . The God -Eater Alice . The Sword of Song . The Star and the Garter . The Argonauts . Goetia .
1907 · PDF PAGE 115
108 THE STAR IN THE WEST O Nature ! Self -begotten ! Spouse of God , The Glory of thy Countenance unveiled ! Thy face , O mother ! Splendour of the Gods ! Behold ! amid the glory of her hair And light shed over from the crown thereof, Wonderful eyes less passionate than Peace That wept ! That wept ! O mystery of Love ! Clasping my hands upon the scarlet rose That flamed upon my bosom , the keen thorns Pierced me and slew ! My spirit was withdrawn Into Her godhead , and my soul made One With the Great Sorrow of the Universe, The Love of Isis ! T…